1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a polishing apparatus and manufacturing method thereof. More particularly, the present invention relates to an inlaid polishing pad and a method of producing the same.
2. Description of Related Art
During the manufacturing process of semiconductor integrated circuits, isolation structures, metal lines and dielectric layers are stacked layer by layer, causing the surface of a wafer to become less and less planar. Limited by the focus depth of an exposing machine, pattern transferal from a photomask to a photoresist layer becomes increasingly difficult, and the exposed pattern of the photoresist layer becomes increasingly distorted. Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) is the only true global planarization process to resolve this problem.
In CMP, a wafer is pressed against and moved about on a polishing pad having polishing slurry thereon. The polishing slurry contains fine abrasive particles and a chemical reagent. Both the wafer and the polishing pad are rotated automatically; hence the wafer is planarized by both the mechanical polishing of the abrasive particles and by the chemical reaction with the chemical reagent.
An important goal of CMP is achieving uniform planarity of the wafer surface, and the uniform planarity also has to be achieved for a series of wafers processed in a batch. The rigidity (or stiffness) and the compressibility (or compliance) of a polishing pad greatly influence the planarity of the polished wafer. Generally speaking, the more rigid a polishing pad, the more planar a wafer polishes; and the more compressible a polishing pad, the more uniform a wafer polishes. Therefore, a wafer polished by a rigid polishing pad often needs to be further polished by a soft polishing pad to improve the polishing uniformity. The CMP process thus suffers from low throughput.
Conventionally, to satisfy both the planarity and the uniformity requirements of the CMP process, at least a layer of rigid pad and at least a layer of soft pad are stacked to form a desired composite polishing pad, such as the polishing pads disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 5,212,910 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,257,478. As stated in U.S. Pat. No. 6,217,426, although a composite polishing pad can partially satisfy both the planarity and the uniformity requirements of the CMP process, some new problems are introduced. For example, pressure transmission is different for a rigid pad and a soft pad, and the polishing uniformity can sometimes be poor. Furthermore, the more layers that are stacked in a composite polishing pad, the more variable the rigidity and compressibility become and thus the more difficult to control are the polishing planarity and uniformity.
Besides, if the two pads in a composite polishing pad are not adhered together well enough, the composite polishing pad may easily delaminate during the polishing process. Therefore, U.S. Pat. No. 6,217,426 discloses a polishing pad having a pattern of protrusions on the mounting surface of the polishing pad to limit the pressure transmission area and increase the compressibility of the polishing pad.
In the prior art described above, the cost and complexity in producing a polishing pad are unavoidably increased.